


Seven Nation Fleet

by anr



Category: Starship Troopers (1997)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8940412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/pseuds/anr
Summary: It makes sense.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leidolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/gifts).



> Request: Carmen and Carl's relationship; a story that fleshed out their friendship a little more.

Within hours of the incident on Planet P, Carmen's uniform is taken away for analysis, her shoulder is stitched, her hair and skin has been scanned and scraped and seared with enough radiation to sterilise a planet's worth of bug juice, and she's been scheduled into seventeen separate follow up tests and evaluations.

It makes sense. That much exposure to a brain bug? She'd be more concerned if they didn't want to study her after.

  


* * *

  


Zander's body was cremated in the nuke blast so there's no funeral service to arrange. His name is simply added to the lists of those killed in action, and she is encouraged to do her part by donating ten credits to the Federation's _Partners and Descendants of the Deceased_ fund in his honour.

(She donates fifty.)

All of their belongings were on the _Rodger Young_ (which, for all intents and purposes, was also cremated that day) so the only thing she has of his, after, is the knife he took from the weapons hatch on their escape pod and palmed to her right before he died.

(She has his name laser-cut into the blade of the knife.)

Neither is a fitting tribute for a Fleet pilot, she knows.

  


* * *

  


Her first ESP scan is two days after the incident and she doesn't even try to hide her smile when she walks into the eval room and finds Carl there, waiting for her. It makes sense -- he did her initial testing back when they were at school so replicating that environment would be the most logical way to determine if her exposure to the brain bug has had any effect on her psy capabilities.

He finishes setting up the program and says, "relax," and that's all the warning she has before he's suddenly staring right through her and the intensity in his expression is so achingly _familiar_ that for a moment she really _does_ feel like they're right back in high school again, Johnny waiting impatiently upstairs for her to finish and Carl's pet ferret curled up on her lap, warm and sleepy.

Then she blinks and the feeling is gone. She refocuses and stares back.

"Seven of spades?"

  


* * *

  


She tries to strike up a conversation when they're done -- all she knows of his life since BA is what she's seen on the Network -- but he shuts down all her attempts. The rejection stings a little but, when she thinks about it after, it makes sense.

They never used to talk much without Johnny around before either. 

  


* * *

  


She's given an acting field promotion to Captain and assigned command of the _Athena_ , an A-class transporter, and it's a disappointment, sure, not to be the one flying anymore but she trusts Stack to be her number two, and the Federation ultimately knows best, so.

Two major offensives her first month in the chair to capture more brain bugs, and her ship weathers both missions with only twenty-seven percent wounded or dead, a feat the Federation ultimately runs a series of propagandas about.

(Carmen watches all seven of them on a loop the first night they're made available, a bottle of Fernet guiding her through, and tries not to count the dead. It's more difficult than she would have thought, and when she eventually falls asleep, it's with Zander's knife under her pillow.)

In the morning, her promotion is made permanent.

  


* * *

  


Another round of testing. In her psy assessment, she tries to focus only on what Carl is sending her and misses time and time again. She's always scored around the sixty-fifth percentile on ESP and it's frustrating to feel like she's sliding.

"Relax," Carl says, "you're over thinking it."

 _Impossible_. (The only thing she's thought about for days is death.)

She looks at him and sees blood. "Queen of hearts?"

  


* * *

  


Like a wound that won't heal, all of a sudden she can't stop thinking about the people she knows who are dead now. Her father. And grandmother. And the kids she went to school with, and her teachers, her next door neighbour, her mathematics tutor. Te and Mark and Santana from the Academy. Captain Deladier. Zander. The men and women on the _Rodger Young_. On the _Athena_.

She remembers Carl's defence after Diz died -- _it's simple numbers, boys and girls_ \-- and she's always been good at maths but no matter how many times she runs these figures, no matter how many times she works out that only point-zero-three percent of the dead in this war so far were people she knew, every single one still _hurts_ , and even if sometimes they come back -- like Johnny did -- she knows that one day they _won't_ \-- like Zander didn't -- and then it'll just be her left, her and those terrible, horrible bugs.

She feels like she did right after Buenos Aires burned, unable to stop crying every time she remembers, only this time there's no Zander to hold her in the dark, no Zander to reassure her there are no bugs on their ship. She stops sleeping properly.

She sees Johnny's name on the reports that slide across her desk some days and it's always tempting to go find him then, to feel the warmth of her memories from when times were simpler and there was nothing truer in her life than his adoration, but she never does and eventually a new report appears on her desk.

  


* * *

  


Her ship loses another third of its crew when a plasma strike cuts through the hull during a mission to Eosphorus.

She starts keeping Zander's knife on her at all times.

  


* * *

  


She gets an auto-write from the lab processing the samples they've been collecting from her stating that all results appear normal and any anomalies are likely nominal. If she would like to know more, she can send a request through the Network using an RJ-176 form.

At her next session with Carl she tries to discuss the results with him, tries to get him to translate the "nominal anomalies" for her, but he refuses. So she refuses to participate in her eval. It's an impressive stalemate, considering.

(He writes her as she's flying her shuttle back to the _Athena_ , an empty chair on camera and his voice coming from off-screen, "do that again and I'll have you lashed on your own flight deck for defying a direct order," then a pause, a heartbeat, and "you're fine, Carmen," a slow breath, measured and calm, the seconds it takes for the star drive to warp between ready, steady and go, "I promise.")

  


* * *

  


That night, for the first time in weeks, she sleeps without dreaming, and when she wakes there is no knife in her hand.

  


* * *

  


Her last evaluation. Carmen sits in the chair and thinks about everything and nothing, about the mission points for her ship's next offensive, about the song she heard on the Network when she woke up this morning, about friendships and starships and the promises teenagers make when they're young and naive.

"Thank you," she tells him in between spades and hearts. "Your message after the last time -- well, it meant a lot. It helped me."

Carl stares at her. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She scoffs a little, but let's it go, and in her mind a shape forms.

Without warning, Carl asks, his tone suddenly youthful and everything she remembers from before, "have you heard _Poledouris_ ' new song?"

The cards match.

  


* * *

  


In the morning, an auto-write from the Federation informing her that a further ten ESP evaluations have been scheduled between her and Dr Jenkins.

Carmen smiles.

(It makes sense.)

  


* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> ALT URL: <http://anr.livejournal.com/562248.html>


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